


Trapped

by bella_novella



Category: Room of Swords (Webcomic)
Genre: Everyone is slightly out of character, Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Monsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25978510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bella_novella/pseuds/bella_novella
Summary: Kodya wakes up in a cell, meets a new friend and witnesses a death. It's all a little jarring.On indefinite hiatus
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't fully know how tags work so I hope I did it right. 
> 
> Also I don't know if I'm going to write any more of this or not.
> 
> I'll try to figure out how tags work. This isn't very good but enjoy. :)

Kodya awoke groggily, the world slowly seeping into view. His head throbbed as though someone had whacked it with a baseball bat. Reaching for the wall, he pulled himself up carefully. Everything became clearer as he did so, so that once he was sat up his surroundings were easily seen.

He was in a cell, the grey stone walls old and crumbling in grains of sand beneath his fingertips. Ivy looped its way around the rusted bars, filtering the harsh sunlight green. Outside the cell, a colossal section of the outer wall had fallen away, letting the sun feel its way around the room.

Across the room there was another cell, with a figure slumped over against the wall. She was maybe around Kodya's age, with long dark hair tied in a ponytail. She was wearing green-blue nurse's scrubs under a ski jacket. The poor girl slept awkwardly, her brow knitted in discomfort and her head lolling in a way that would leave a nasty crick in her neck once she woke up.

Kodya moved to the front of the cell. Or, he tried to, but he was pulled back sharply by a shackle at his ankle. The girl, he noticed, had one too. Though her's was around her wrist. It was made of the same decaying metal as the bars, clearly worn with disuse and in desperate need of a replacement. Still, it kept him in place, keeping him within about two metres of the back wall. Kodya sighed and cleared his throat.

"Hey!" he called, watching the girl stir, "Hey! You okay over there?"

She rubbed her eye and blinked away sleep, grimacing at the pain in her neck.

"Ouch," she mumbled, "Yes, I think I'm alright. I just fell asleep weirdly."

The girl's eyes became muddled with confusion when she noticed her surroundings, opening and closing her mouth a few times as she struggled to find her words.

"What in the...?"

"Yeah, I don't know either," Kodya shrugged, half believing he was dreaming. He'd certainly had weirder dreams than this in the past, though this was definitely one of the more coherent ones. 

"Well, this is just... odd," she decided, tugging curiously at her chain, "How...?"

Kodya blew out a sigh.

"I haven't a clue. Just woke up here a few minutes before you."

The girl began fiddling with the pockets in her jacket, clearly searching for something.

"Hey, what's your name?" Kodya tried. The girl grabbed hold of something in her pocket and revealed a phone.

"I'm Nephthys, what about you?" she smiled at him, trying to turn her phone on.

"Kodya. What are you doing with that?"

Nephthys looked up, brown eyes shining with determination.

"I'm calling the police," she said simply, "And if they think I'm crazy, I'm calling my friends. This is just... bizarre, and if it does turn out to be a dream like its all seeming right now, I've done no harm, have I?"

Kodya rocked on his feet and nodded, absently feeling his pockets for his own phone. But it'd been smashed, back when...

In the other cell, Nephthys's face lit up from the light of the screen. She pressed the phone to her ear and Kodya heard the soft ringing. Another sound found its way to the cell from somewhere high above; a clicking, like nails tapping against brick, scuttling around and growing gradually louder, catching and dragging quietly. Kodya couldn't help but think of spiders, but he knew in reality that spiders didn't make that noise.

"Umm, Nephthys?" he called as quietly as he could, "Did you hear that?" 

Nephthys tilted her head to show she was listening, but she kept the phone to her ear.

"No? What was it?"

As Kodya opened his mouth, the phone connecting, audibly announcing "Nine-One-One, what's your emergency?" to the echoing cell block. The scuttling stopped abruptly, which was not as comforting as Kodya would have liked.

"Hello?" Nephthys replied, "We're locked in some kind of cell, I think. It looks old--"

"Ni-- one, -- at's your-- gency?" came the responder again, this time crackling and broken. 

"Hello?" Nephthys spoke, unease creeping into her tone, "I can't hear you."

"He-- o? I-- hear you."

"Yes, can you hear us? We're stuck somewhere and--" 

"Hello?"

Kodya edged as close to the bars as he could.

"Nephthys, I think you should hang up. This doesn't sound right."

Nephthys nodded, bringing the phone away from her ear to hang up. The voice continued, growing more and more persistent.

"-- hear you."

"I can't-- you."

"I-- you."

"I see you."

Nephthys's phone crackled with electricity, sending a shock up her arm and causing her to cry out and drop it. It cracked against the hard stone, but neither really noticed. They were too focused on the thing staring them down.

A large shadow hung in the open wall, blocking the sun with its huge frame. A sickly pale face glared down, hungry eyes bulging from their sockets. The face was connected to a long, lizard-like body, covered in ever changing scales and limbs. Pushing through her sides were thousands of faces, all pulsating and trying to force their way through her skin to no avail, each a mask of fearful hopelessness or shrieking terror. Kodya couldn't decide which one was worse. Her lips turned into a manic smile.

"Good children stay quiet," she whispered, pressing a clawed hand to her lips, "Don't make mama mad. When mama gets mad, she gets hungry."

She crawled along the ceiling and around the corner, out of sight aside from the end of her tail wrapped around. The monster came back not a moment later, clutching a struggling boy in her hand. He scratched at his captor, wriggling in desperate attempts to escape and flee. The monster simple laughed at his attempts, clutching him tighter and effortlessly cracking his bones. He slumped over, still screaming in agony and fear but now defenseless as a doll.

She threw him in the air a few times, snapping more bones with every landing, before moving to dangle him above her detached jaw. He was gone in an instant, replaced by crunching as the monster chewed. She swallowed and sighed, before turning to stare at the two of them again.

"Behave, or it's you two next."

And with that she slithered away, leaving nothing but some blood, a few bone fragments, and a retreating chitter.

Kodya could feel his heart pounding rapidly against his chest. He could hear Nephthys's quickened breathing and met her eyes, which were wide and horrified.

"What the hell?!" she whispered. Kodya shook his head slowly, trying to communicate that he didn't understand. He had sunk down against the wall as he watched, now not daring to make any sudden movements. Nephthys had sunk into her jacket, whispering curses and unintelligible sentences as she tried to comprehend what she had just seen.

Whatever the hell was going on, they needed to get out.


	2. An Escape Attempt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kodya and Nephthys make an escape attempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of surgery and some descriptions of injuries. Brief mention of CPR.

Nephthys was no stranger to gore. She was in med school, for crying out loud! She spent hours looking at the insides of the human body daily, poking and prodding at organs and memorising treatment methods. She had reset her friend's arm after an accident on a ski trip, helped a kid after he broke his ankle on a skateboard, even given CPR to some poor person who nearly drowned in a pool. 

Hell, she had even helped in surgery before! Granted, it was part of her course and she barely did much other than hand the surgeon a few tools and answer when asked how to treat any problems that could theoretically arise, but she had still stayed in the operation room for the full two hours, staring at some stranger's bloody chest. And she hadn't felt nauseous at all, a feat she was rather proud of.

But, she supposed, watching a surgery is very different to watching a man's bones get snapped like twigs as he screamed bloody murder. And professional surgeons are very, very different to giant scaly dragon monsters with faces just barely passing as human.

So she supposed most of the shock was from that.

Kodya didn't look much better than she felt. He was deathly pale, absently scratching the bricks behind him slowly. His breathing was forced and wobbly in places, but he seemed to be controlling it well, all things considered.

As it stood, neither of them were in a place to help each other. So they let a silence stretch between them, long and heavy as their brains tried to settle on the facts of the situation.

"So," Nephthys tried shakily after what must have been forever, but she still didn't feel like enough time had gone by, "We just saw someone..."

Her voice caught on the last syllable. For the best, probably. 'We just saw someone die' wasn't a good way to start a conversation.

All she received from Kodya was a wide-eyed glance and a stiff nod. It was clear that neither of them were ready to try anything, but Nephthys's fear of a painful death only slightly outweighed the obvious shared need to take a moment.

"Kodya, we need to get out of here," she tried again, attempting desperately to turn the shock into something other than paralysing fear, "That thing may come back for us, and if it does we might--"

A distant scuttling interrupted her, moving down and past the opening into the vast blue sky. Nephthys's breath hitched as she recognised the claws of the monster, shrinking further into the back of her cell as it passed. Kodya mirrored her. They waited silently for the noise to leave, Nephthys praying that Lady Luck hadn't abandoned them just yet. Thankfully, the noise didn't stop, tapping straight by the open wall and heading further down, fading quickly. Both waited until the count of ten to breath sighs of relief.

Kodya stood slowly, careful not to rattle the chain at his ankle.

"Alright," he said softly, voice still wobbling and hitching, "Let's have a look around. There's probably something we can use to get out, preferably quietly."

The two scanned the room thoroughly, only moving and risking rattling their chains if absolutely necessary. Nephthys was chained to the wall that had partially fallen apart, allowing her to easily walk along the wall and about two metres into the middle of her cell but she was unable to reach the far wall. Kodya found himself in the same situation, only he was chained to the back wall. If there were any conveniently-placed keys nearby in the hallway, neither of them would be able to reach them.

After an hour or so of searching and suggesting possible escape methods back and forth, Nephthys had a brief flash of inspiration and began fiddling with her hair. Kodya cocked his head to the side.

"What are you doing?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

"It's probably dumb, but..." Nephthys pulled a hairpin from her ponytail, "I'm hoping that the 'hairpin escape' method isn't just movie BS."

Kodya's faced flashed with several unidentifiable emotions. He settled with just shrugging. 

"I've used it before and it seemed to do the trick," he said nonchalantly. Nephthys looked up from inspecting the lock to eye him. Kodya coughed and hid a smug smile behind his sleeve.

After rattling the hairpin in her shackle for a few minutes, Nephthys concluded that lockpicking required more skills than just owning a hairpin. She sighed defeatedly and looked over to Kodya, who was watching intently from his cell.

"Why don't I try?" he suggested. Nephthys glanced to the ceiling as she thought.

"Do you have a hairpin?" she asked.

"No."

"Then how are you going to pick the lock?" 

Kodya stood up and opened his hands like he was about to catch a tennis ball, moving as close to the cell front as he could. 

"You're going to throw it over," he said. Nephthys spluttered for a moment.

"I'm going to... what?" she said, not sure if she was mishearing, "What if we loose it? Besides, I can barely throw a ping-pong ball!"

"Frisbee it," Kodya told her, still stood ready to catch it.

"I'm not going to... Why would I do that? It would probably end up in your eye!" 

"I would rather lose an eye than stay stuck in here. Now just throw the damn pin!"

Nephthys groaned and ran a hand through her hair, raising her hands in a surrender motion.

"Don't blame me when you have no depth perception," she mumbled, readying her arm and hoping that whatever luck they had hadn't run out.

Nephthys stuck her arm as far as she could through the rusted bars and sent the pin flying across the room, barely able to keep track of the tiny thing spinning through the air. There was a clatter as it hit the ground somewhere. Kodya quickly dropped to his knees searching, both eyes still seemingly still intact.

After a moment of frantic searching, Kodya rose, holding something above his head.

"Got it," he grinned. Nephthys nearly jumped for joy, but instead settled for pulling her puffy coat sleeves over her hands and clapping, the sound muffled but no less celebratory.

Kodya set to work right away, picking and fiddling with his ankle shackle. Nephthys, for lack of other entertainment, watched his clumsy fidgeting, stifling giggles at his angry-looking focused face and constant whispering and murmuring as he tried to fight the lock.

"Do you have anything I could use as well as the pin?" he asked at one point, "Like a pocket knife or another hairpin? Just to make this easier."

Nephthys shook her head. Kodya nodded and resumed.

The sky outside was beginning to take on an orange hue when Nephthys heard a metallic grinding that snapped her from her thoughts. Kodya's shackle lay open on the ground, his leg free aside from a few leftover rust particles. Kodya himself stood a little further away from it, shaking his hand limply.

"I think that gave me blisters," he confessed. Both of them were too full of newfound hope for an escape to think about sleeping or taking a break though, so by what they presumed was midnight Nephthys's shackle was being carefully removed from her wrist and set aside noiselessly.

"Okay," she whispered, rising to her feet and dusting herself off, "Where to now?"

In the moment, anywhere but the horrid prison cells with their murderous monster sounded like heaven.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! <3


End file.
